The amount of second level cache, also known as L2 cache, has been varying quite a lot through the past few years. A large amount of this kind of cache improves the performance of the processor as the processor doesn't have to request information from the RAM as often, which is many times slower. In the stone age of computers this memory was located on the motherboard, and was then, as the demand for lower latencies and speed increased, moved closer and closer to the processor. Nowadays the L2 cache isn't just a part of silicon, it makes up a majority of the total number of transistors. This is one of the reasons it is not economically feasible to put as much memory as possible on a processor - the yield of processors without defects goes down as the amount of transistors goes up. But at the same time the manufacturing processes are refined and improve the yield of fully functional processors. A positive result of this is when the manufacturers launch lower-range processors with more cache as well as the higher-end models.
To elaborate further, you can remove all of the cache and make a really cheap processor. It will not only be very cheap, but also extremely slow. But how much does the second level of cache really influence and affect the performance of today's Core 2 Duo processors? We at NordicHardware have gathered three processors, with 4MB, 2MB and 1MB respectively, to investigate this more thoroughly.
We start with the test system.
